In the latest amongst a spate of lawsuits being filed against Electronic Voting Machine Companies around the country, the Oregon Sec. of State has announced today that they have filed a complaint against Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) for breach of contract in failing to provide the state with disabled-accessible voting machines, as promised, in time to meet the January 1, 2006 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) deadline.

The complaint, filed yesterday on behalf of the state of Oregon in Marion County Circuit Court, is downloadable here in full [PDF, 8 pages].

In a statement just issued by the office of Bill Bradbury, Oregon's Sec. of State, he said, "I'm disappointed in ES&S. They agreed to provide us with voting machines, they didn't follow through on that agreement, and that failure directly punishes people with disabilities."

The press release goes on to explain the history of ES&S's broken commitment to provide disabled-accessible electronic AutoMark voting systems to the state in what seems to echo problems that ES&S and several of the other electronic voting machine vendors are now having in meeting contractual obligations all around the country. The problem in Oregon is just the latest to come to light, as the voting machine vendors have been snatching up any and all available agreements with states, in light of Election Officials' attempts to comply with various mandates set forth, and funded by federal tax dollars, in the disastrous HAVA legislation of 2002. John Gideon, has written several articles on the epidemic recently for BRAD BLOG; two them are here and here.

As the Oregon Secretary of State's release explains:

ES&S submitted the winning bid to a request for proposals issued by the Secretary of State in July 2005. In that bid, ES&S agreed to all of the standard state contract terms, and agreed to provide one million dollars worth of AutoMark touch-screen electronic voting machines by the January 1, 2006 federal deadline.

On January 10, 2006, ES&S informed the Secretary of State that it would not agree to the terms of the contract, and would not deliver the voting machines unless the Secretary changed the terms of the contract. Bradbury refused to alter the contract to meet ES&S's demands, which then led to this lawsuit.

"We will not leave our elections in the hands of companies that do not follow through on their obligations, and we will not be coerced into altering our contracts," said Bradbury.

In addition to failures to meet such obligations as simply providing hardware and software as promised to states and counties, companies such as ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic, have failed across the country to provide hardware and software that actually works and actually counts voters votes accurately as they intended to cast them.

HAVA was passed in 2002 by Congress after efforts led by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) --- and funded by Diebold lobbyists including Ney's former chief of staff, David DiStefano --- convinced lawmakers that the bill would correct perceived problems revealed with voting systems during the 2000 Florida Election debacle.

The bill, which cleverly includes a provision requiring at least one disabled-accessable voting device in every American polling place as of 2006 --- a provision which has led jurisdictions to believe they must upgrade their voting equipment to use poorly designed, secretive and hackable electronic voting devices --- has been an unmitigated disaster so far.

The Oregon lawsuit is just the latest in a growing array of suits filed by voters and election officials around the country in light of HAVA implementation that has seen officials scrambling, apologizing, making excuses and, in many cases, left to come up with alternate plans to carry out impending primary elections in 2006. Voters, in the meantime, have been largely ignored, left hanging, and crossing their fingers in hoping that somehow their vote might be counted accurately this year --- or even counted at all. Unfortunately, given the way most of the new voting systems work, there is little or no way for those voters to have even the slightest clue whether or not their vote will be counted at all.

Amongst just some of the lawsuits and other legal proceedings now underway in light of HAVA implementation around the country...

ALASKA: Democratic Party files suit against state to release Diebold voting data from 2004 Election.

FLORIDA: Leon County Supervisor of Elections begins legal action against Diebold for breach of contract after machines found to be hackable; Attorney General subpoenas Voting Machine companies in investigation of possible collusion.

ILLINOIS: Republicans ask for 20% recount after Sequoia machines fail in Cook County Primary Election; Democrat says he may file suit on behalf of both Republicans and Dems across state.

In addition to the state and county suits, a class action Securities Fraud complaint has been filed by shareholders against Diebold for, amongst other reasons, failing to disclose known problems with their electronic voting systems. Additional legal proceedings are currently in the works in several other states as well, The BRAD BLOG has learned, and so far we've only had two of 50 state primaries in 2006, the first year that HAVA kicks in in full. Both primaries so far, in Texas and Illinois, revealed massive electile dysfunctions as machines failed, tabulations were found to be inaccurate, and final results were delayed due to numerous equipment problems.

Thank you, Bill Bradbury. I'm sending him this blog to let him know that there is a lot more wrong with ES&S than just breaching a contract of sale. Bill ... we already have all paper ballots, just call for all hand counting ... NOW. Some statute or other won't let us? The legislature just came into special session today .... give them a bill! Bill.

From a constituent in Clackamas County OR where the Elections Director doesn't have a clue even though I wrote and told her optical scan is an optical illusion.

Those mail in ballots, like absenttee ballots in every state are counted by optical scanners. Additionally, to meet requirements for disability access mandated by HAVA, several Oregon counties signed contracts with ES&S to provide AutoMark ballot-marking devices to be available clerk's offices for disbled voters. For background see this article:http://votetrustusa.org/...p;id=1121&Itemid=113

The Republican party, which is the party of utter disaster, unleashed this mess on us, as well as the disaster known as George W. Bush. And the chaos in Iraq. And the un-Constitutional Patriot Act. And job outsourcing. And Katrina. And Kyoto. And staggering budget deficits. And massive loans from China. And bird-flipping Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And the cocaine for weapons Iran-Contra scandal. And, without a doubt, 9/11. The whole point of the e-voting debacle from their perspective appears to be either lowering voter enthusiasm and turnout (a plus for Republicans), or outright fraud - enabling insiders to manipulate vote counts to ensure Republicans maintain control of the House, Senate, White House, federal judiciary and soon the Supreme Court of the United States (a bigger plus). Our national treasures are being plundered before our eyes to support a "neocon" agenda more suited to Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany than America. Our rights, our Constitution and our nation's storied past mean nothing to these traitors whose only loyalty is to their collective greed. And their greed is apparently boundless. Watching this happen is like watching a grand piano slowly tumble down a mountainside, or the proverbial train wreck in slow motion, but on a planetary scale. Yet, it feels much worse than that, especially to the thousands of families both here and abroad affected adversely by the hubris and insanity emanating from this Republican administration of con-men, religious hucksters and crooks.

I pray the Republican party goes the way of the Whigs and the Tories - with all of the love and affection associated with the death of Hitler. And why not? Their evil and megalomania is one and the same as the lunatic leaders of WWII. Republicans just haven't incinerated anyone in gas chambers, that we know of. They outsource such trivialities to other fascist states. It's called rendering. It's immoral. It's illegal. It's abhorrent. It's today's Republican party. Thanks, Newt. The revolution's been swell. I mean, swill.

Think, people. This Republican leadership has now conquered and occupied two nations, deposing their leaders and installing puppet governments. Now they are aiming their sights at Iran, while saber-rattling at Syria and placating Korea (an apparent actual possessor of nuclear weapons technology with unpredictable leadership that has recently threatened to annihilate Seoul). Ask yourselves: How many nations in a single region of the world has the United States ever conquered and occupied in one administration without so much as a world war ongoing? How many nations did Hitler conquer and occupy before the nations of Europe and the United States ganged up to defeat him? How many has Bush already conquered in his first 5 years in office, and what are his plans for the next 3?

May everyone voting for Republicans forevermore feel the blood of the dead of WWII, the dead of Afghanistan, the dead of Iraq, the dead of New York, Washington and Pennsylvania from the orchestrated carnage of 9/11, as well as the blood of those yet to die in more pointless, indefensible wars Republicans will most certainly instigate in the future, on their hands. Republican voters must all sincerely despise America and everything it once stood for to elect this human refuse into power. Put down the I-Pod, turn off Rush Limbaugh and wake up! Demand paper ballots! Don't be conned by the neocons! It's not worth dying for Diebold.

The reason that is wrong is because it is anti-voter and even when the voters overwhelmingly favor a particular outcome, this can be thwarted and republicans could hold the majority.

In other words, the design of the districts is such that it thwarts and is contrary to the will of the people at large. It is designed to preserve incumbency and thwart the political notion of accountability.

The effect is that the people cannot replace members of congress unless and until the kool aid drinking devotees of that congress member revolt. Districts are carved out in strange shapes that result in districts passing thru many counties instead of being defined and bounded by one or more counties.

The map link above shows how true this is. Look at the 25th and 28th districts of Texas, Tom DeLay constructs, to see what I mean.

We have a dictatorial situation anytime the will of the people is thwarted by its government. There is no other name for it.

Some dictatorships are less vile than others, but calling a spade a spade is what I am talking about.

We have a dictatorship if the people cannot express their will by their vote. If the government allows us to vote but that vote is meaningless, the fact is that it is a dictatorship because the people cannot change the government.

The Texas gerrymandering case has been put on the fast track by the US Supreme Court (link here).

This is unusual under normal circumstances, but is all the more unusual since the cases have been stalled and have therefore been on the slow track in the US Supreme Court until now.

The case it now seems that will be reversed is Henderson v Perry (link here).

The issue of gerrymandering is equal to the problem with voting machines. Because even if we perfect the voting machines, the gerrymandering issue is just as much a threat.

Both evils ... gerrymandering and fraudulent and junky electronic voting machines ... are destroying American democracy.

And if the judicial goes down the tubes too (link here), and does not stop gerrymandering, I am sorry to say that democracy will be gone from American soil for a long time.